Doctors are supposedly trying to kill us – Hana

Conspiracy theories exist all around us. About half of Americans believe in at least one conspiracy theory. I guess it depends on how you’ve been raised to think: whether you search one step further to find a deeper meaning or if you believe everything your textbooks and teachers tell you. Examples of popular conspiracy theories are how George Bush did 9/11, the 1961 Apollo moon landing didn’t happen, Shakespeare didn’t write all those plays, and Princess Diana was killed on purpose. A conspiracy theory that has been circling the internet for a while is the evils of Big Pharma. Big Pharma is the nickname given to the world’s immeasurable and influential pharmaceutical industry. Big Pharma consists of powerful companies that make billions of dollars a year by selling drugs and medical devices. There is lots of speculation around these companies and how they seek profit over the health and well-being of the humans they serve.

The big idea of the theory is Big Pharma knows that if humans are healthy, the healthcare industry does not survive. And with the population believing that they are ill and being told by doctors that they are ill, the healthcare industry will therefore thrive. Doctors are heavily relying on drug companies for information about what they prescribe, they’re becoming ill-informed about what all the interactive drugs are doing to toxically harm their patients. And with all the most commonly prescribed drugs being addictive, Big Pharma, with the help of all their untrained doctors, have turned a large percentage of the human population into drug addicts. We become so physically and psychologically addicted to these artificial substances that are actually so detrimental to our health and well-being. There are also theories that they’re hiding actual cures from us and providing us with only controls for them.

Premise 4 – Big Pharma companies don’t care about human well-being and just about their profit

Conclusion – All the prescription drugs humans are taking are harmful

This argument obviously has its flaws. To look at the argument visually, it can be presented like this:

Premise 1 is true – we take these prescription drugs to improve our health. Whether they are for psychological or physical improvement our goal as humans is to survive, and since nobody can prove whether the Big Pharma theory is true or false, we therefore take them as we believe they help survival.

Premise 2 can be accepted as true because that is who our society has developed to go to when we are ill and who we get our medication from.

Premise 3 can be accepted as true because doctors get their prescription pills from these large pharmaceutical companies. Although doctors go through an enormous amount of training in their university career, new prescription drugs are being developed and changed daily and are therefore not in their university training. So instead, doctors rely on these big companies to provide and produce information about their new products.

Premise 4 can be true or false depending on what you think. If you do think Big Pharma is actually conspiring against us, you probably believe this is true. If you think Big Pharma is not evil and these prescription drugs are helping our condition, you probably think they are false.

So depending on your view on this conspiracy theory this may either be factually true or false. From the diagram you can determine that the conclusion is supported by the premises which makes it valid. Ill humans fit into the prescription drug circle because that is what we take to get better, the prescription drug circle fits in the doctors circle because they are who provide us with these prescriptions, doctors fit in the Big Pharma circle because they are the ones who provide doctors with information, and the Big Pharma circle can’t fit in the well-being of humans because they don’t care about it. Therefore none of the prescription drugs ill humans are taking are in the best interest of our well-being. And once again, however you view the theory of Big Pharma determines whether or not you think the argument is also sound (since something can only be sound if it is both valid and factually correct).

I don’t know what to believe when it comes to Big Pharma. Maybe it’s because I don’t want to think that such influential and large companies aren’t being beneficial towards our species. Or maybe it’s just too big of a stretch to think of our pharmaceutical industry like that. My parents are both largely scientifical thinkers and have raised my brothers and I to think like that too. Therefore it is hard for me to believe that something so essential is actually part of the reason that we become and continue to be ill. These theories are mainly made up by conspiracy theorists that spend their lives questioning everything; but if there is some truth in them that is proven it will probably set off a numerous, horrific chain of events.